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User blog:Pafton/Overhauling the FoE Wiki
Here, I'll be talking about how 2019's been for the Forge of Empires Wiki (from my perspective). Introduction (January - March) The first quarter of 2019 recorded an abysmal activity rate from my side. Indeed, one contribution in 3 months, and that too being a simple reply to a post on my message wall. My work is partly to blame for this, as I got a backlog of cases which I had to deal with. Coupling this with the fact that I was studying for my Bachelor's degree and that I did not find time to play the game makes it a perfect recipe for inactivity. I returned on 5 April to make amends for my previous inactivity and fulfill my duties as Main Admin. This blog post is to highlight the steps which I took to revitalize and overhaul the FoE Wiki and its community, both of which were rapidly stagnating and deteriorating in the absence of proper and active staffing. April My first priority upon returning to the wiki was to recruit efficient, talented and dedicated staff who could assist me in restoring FoE Wiki back to its days of glory. With a heavy heart, I had to terminate the services of a passionate admin, Mearnska, and an equally enthusiastic CM, Diisel, due to severe underperformance. To be fair, I gave them a warning to resume activity on the wiki. The former did not care to respond, and lost his rights after a month or so. The latter, on the other hand, acknowledged his poor performance and voluntarily resigned. The hunt was on for new replacements. The Archaeology Event hit the beta server on 9 April, and work related to it began, which included creation of the event and building pages, setting up the layout etc. The pressure of work increased, as the Space Age Mars just arrived too, and creation of pages in its regard was my prioritaire numero uno. Another headache came in the form of a rogue website, which was blantantly plagiarizing our pages and claiming them as their own. A similar scenario happened just sometime later, and this led to the formulation of our Terms of Use, as a safeguard against future plagiarism. May The first week of May was spent in me being on a well-deserved vacation, from the 30th of the previous month to the 10th of this month. The FoE Soccer Cup arrived, and work pertaining to this commenced. A new CM joined our team in the form of Puer et morietur II, who I observed was very dedicated and proactive with regard to events and their associated stuff. I began experimenting with site-wide JavaScript, and took upon my self the mantle of handling the new, big and unreleased feature called Guild Battlegrounds. Creation of Space Age Mars buildings' pages and the polishing of the main article continued. June The beginning of June brought a pleasant surprise to the wiki in the form of TheEmbracedOne, an experienced user sent on the behalf of Fandom (the host platform) who was here to help us with complex parameters of editing, as well as provide his advice and unique insight to us. Maintenance and polishing of the Virtual Future and Space Age Mars pages continued. On the advice of Beelzebob6666 (Robert), we updated the way events pages are shown and began using templates in lieu of complex images and files. A new JS addition was enabled which allowed users to be given a wide variety of customizable profile tags, which could be displayed on their mastheads. Robert joined our wiki team on the 13th and has proven to be an asset in terms of technical editing and coding. His sheer dedication and willpower continues to amaze and motivate me. An important and crucial step was implemented on the same date. All current and functioning members of the wiki team were assigned 'spheres'; areas in which they proved their expertise and which they were most comfortable in handling. They were designated as in charge of pages pertaining to their respective spheres. This was done to reduce burn out amongst the members and motivate them to perform better in their areas of expertise. The wiki admin team suffered a great setback in the loss of Oraeyn, an incumbent but inactive Main Admin. Her mysterious disappearance particularly pained me, as I had the pleasure of working with her for around 2 years, and counted her among my friends. I tried reaching out to her but to no avail. Towards the end of June, the Projects page was introduced, as a method to facilitate better completion of tasks and maintaining a systematic record of them. The introduction of the Antiques Dealer in the game was an exciting event to handle. July In July, it was decided to revamp the basics of the wiki. An attempt (which is still ongoing) was conceptualized which involved restructuring the very foundations upon which the wiki rests. A major chunk of this involved recategorization and updation of the category system, and several new categories were (are being) created. My name was splattered across the Wiki Activity, as I set about categorizing and recategorizing every page that I could lay my eyes upon. Due to the overloading on the Wiki Activity, as well as my use of a script for editing, a bot account was set up, which was a reverse of my name- Notfap. I then went on leave for a week (28 July - 4 August) to attend to some personal matters. I continued to fiddle with a bit of JS. A study conducted by me found that the community participation and user engagement in the site was at an all-time low. The admin team decided to introduce a slew of measures to tackle this disturbing statistic. Outstanding and talented contributors who displayed consistency in their edits throughout the month were decided to be rewarded with the Editor of the Month tag. Hus123 was the inaugural holder of this position, though Robert was later retroactively made the Editor of the Month for June. August August, despite being only half over (at the time of writing this blog) has already borne witness to some exciting developments. The 2019 Summer Event has begun on the live servers and is correspondingly being tracked on the wiki. This, coupled with the release of the Antiques Dealer, resulted in a never before seen surge in wiki activity that has surpassed all records. Several new users made their debut and contributed bit-by-bit in developing these articles. In an effort to increase community participation, the well-renowned and user-friendly feature called Discussions was introduced. This is very convenient, possesses a sleek and flexible user interface and has a very powerful notification system. It is hoped that the community finds a common platform to discuss and address its issues and queries, opinions, concerns through this feature. After 4 years, the top navigation bar was completely redone and renovated as the old one was felt to be too redundant and not suitable as the game has changed a lot since then and several new features have been added. By the end of this month, the wiki will have new achievements commemorating different facets of the editing experience. All the individual technology pages of a given age now redirect to a cumulative page which displays all the technologies of that age in a easy-to-read manner. In perhaps the most exciting and quantum step, FoE Wiki has expanded its presence on social media! The wiki is now available on Twitter and will very soon be found on Facebook too. A Discord server for the wiki has been maintained for a long time and will continue to be supported. In connection with this, the Administrative Team has been divided into 2 verticals. The Wiki vertical comprises the staff who are concerned with the wiki, i.e., the Admins, CMs, Discussions Moderators etc. The new Social Media vertical includes the Discord, Facebook and Twitter Moderators, who are tasked with upholding the wiki's reputation and image in these forms of social media. Due to his excellent and consistent contributions, Puer et morietur II was promoted to Administrator. Ebsthedrunk joined the Wiki Vertical as a Comments Reviewer. The journey so far has been interesting and eventful. With the support of you, the readers and the editors, I have no doubt that the FoE Wiki will continue to thrive and prosper! Category:Blog posts